


Ribbon of Darkness

by anomieow



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, D/s, Depression, Feminization, Hate Sex, M/M, PWP, it’s more like general dislike sex but ok
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:26:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27342727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anomieow/pseuds/anomieow
Summary: Every sunless day cements this secret conviction of his that the ships and their men are the sole tenants of an infinite, cheerless room. That all that came before—his boyhood of singing trees, all his bombastic glories, each fevered pleasure of the body—was a dream, and this,this, is the reality to which one eternally wakes. Grit accrues where in him lantern light cannot reach and in the liminal drift between sleep and waking he dreams sometimes that there never was anything but this. That behind and before him unspools a single, eternal thread of frozen black and he feels his blind way along, eyes screwed shut against the driving wind. This he keeps to himself, of course. Externally, he maintains Sir John’s dogma of unflagging optimism, for—unlike some people he could name—he knows that the expression doubt is a luxury a good leader cannot afford.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames
Comments: 15
Kudos: 58





	Ribbon of Darkness

The Terror’s timbers, girded twice over to withstand the coming ice, sing as she lists incrementally starboard. James takes a sip of whiskey and thinks idly of how in Hertfordshire the trees would sometimes be shellacked in an inch of ice after a storm, and when the wind rose it chafed against the bark, sending out a similar sound: a sort of haunted singing sawing. He recalls lying in bed as a boy those nights, a funny kind of fever of mingled thrill and terror in him. The world felt too vast and wild to bear, and the thought of being so small and invisible in it—he agitates the amber in his glass. Such a memory would be a dull story and certainly not something to share the miserable man seated catecorner to him. 

He clasps his hands before him on the table and regards Crozier with a gaze he hopes is a piercing one. It has been four months and two days since Sir John was killed, and Francis and James keep up only the scantest pretense of civilized conversation. Still, they preserve the tradition of Sunday suppers aboard one another’s ships primarily so as to enact another, younger and more intimate tradition between the two of them, one which would not please Sir John’s spirit near as much as their dining together may. James likes to imagine Franklin’s spirit hovering over them as they eat, beaming grandfatherly benediction down upon them as they shovel over-salted pate into their mouths and sip their strong tea in rankling silence. And this spirit he dismisses uneasily as he and Francis alike push their chairs back from the table and James slides off his boots. 

He does not feel up to their usual business tonight, for he has been terribly down lately. What was it he’d once told Francis? To try and shake the brown study? Now, worse than that, he himself is a composition in black and gray. It feels as though the frigid darkness has no end. Every sunless day cements this secret conviction of his that the ships and their men are the sole tenants of an infinite, cheerless room. That all that came before—his boyhood of singing trees, all his bombastic glories, each fevered pleasure of the body—was a dream, and this, _this_ , is the reality to which one eternally wakes. Grit accrues where in him lantern light cannot reach and in the liminal drift between sleep and waking he dreams sometimes that there never was anything but this. That behind and before him unspools a single, eternal thread of frozen black and he feels his blind way along, eyes screwed shut against the driving wind. This he keeps to himself, of course. Externally, he maintains Sir John’s dogma of unflagging optimism, for—unlike some people he could name—he knows that the expression doubt is a luxury a good leader cannot afford. 

“I envy you sometimes,” he says now to Francis, briefly massaging his own feet. It feels good to rub his fingers into his arches and calves, to flex his long feet. The boots are a vanity, accentuating the sleek musculature of his legs, but even after all this time they’ve not quite learned the shape of him. 

Francis leans back in his chair and watches as James kneels before him and removes his boots as well, leaving him in his stockinged feet. Then he asks with sour bemusement, “And what about me could you possibly envy?”

“That, precisely. That... thoroughgoing conviction of yours that you’re of so little worth. It’s rather an indulgence, don’t you think?” 

“But you agree, do you not?—ah!” He gives a startled gasp as James twists the crook of his knuckle particularly hard against the arch of his foot. 

“Only inasmuch as you do, my dear Francis.” He pauses, grabs Francis’ gaze, and gentles his foot down onto the cold wooden floor. He goes to massage the other but Francis pulls it loose. “We haven’t got all night,” he complains.

“Oh, here I was thinking you were planning to save time by having me like a whore again, all swaddled up like a man ready to run at a moment’s notice.”

“Do shut up, James. If you insist on doing me these favors, you’ll do it my way. I’ll gag you if need be.” 

Sometimes he does, with whatever’s handy. Once, he’d used a rag Jopson had used to mop up spilled whiskey; the burn of the stuff and the underlilt of mildewed cloth rendered him claustrophobic and so breathless he thought he might pass out but he spent so hard he cried. (Francis had held him briefly afterwards, but stiffly, nervously. Better if he’d left him alone.) But gagged, of course, James can’t make all those little sounds of pain and praise that Francis craves; gagged, his breath comes too short for him to safely choke him. 

Tonight he does not gag nor choke him, nor any of the other silly brutal things he does because he thinks they hurt James. Tonight he is slow, languid: feigning love. He lingers over James’ body, eyes closed, until James is shivering with each touch, his teeth grit. But he keeps his quiet. He’s many things but he’s not a beggar.

“Quiet tonight, my dear James,” Francis finally says as he’s frigging himself full enough to breach him. “Is something on your mind?”

“You’ve no interest in what’s on my mind,” James retorts, “But I shall tell you: I’m not Sophia and you must not pretend I am. When you’re gentle like this—no. It’s an insult I’ll not bear.”

“I don’t see why not. You’ve borne far worse. Ah—fuck.” He’s grown soft in his fist. 

“Oh, Francis.”

“Not a word.”

“You know what does it—it’s the drink—“

“I said, not a word!” Francis rears back and slaps him, hard, across the face.

James tilts his face up: _Again, if you dare,_ he seems to say, but holds his tongue. 

Francis leans back on his heels and laughs. “Anyway,” he says, “don’t pretend for a moment you wouldn’t have someone else here in _my_ stead.”

“As a companion? As a captain? In a moment, yes. Less than.”

Francis regards James. He is not as drunk tonight as he often his. The muscles in his jaw twitch minutely and he recognizes the smoldering seed of rage in his eyes. But then he inhales sharply and says, “As what kind of companion?” 

“Take it how you will.” 

“Tell me, did they treat you as I do?” This mysterious and apparently legion _they_ is invoked often by Francis, whose insecurity he wears like a badge of merit on his breast. _They,_ the thousand lover ghosts of James Fitzjames. As though he’d nothing better to do than lie on his back all day. “Did not one of them slap you about as I do? Shove at you, mistreat you? Were they too much gentlemen?” 

“A hundred times the gentleman, down to the man.” 

“Yet it is I who please you,” Francis says in a softer tone, pulling at himself once again.

That is the distillation of it, yes. Yet a simple _yes_ will not do to explain what it is in Francis that compels him so: that his body is a salving reality in a world that feels increasingly illusory, that his eyes (glittering with drink or easy tears, red rimmed) give off light nevertheless. That he blazes and pitches like light from a low candle, all smoke and the crowding odor of old tallow, but is light nevertheless. Warm light. What he wants belongs to a different lifetime; what he needs is what sustains him in this one. 

“To say you please me,” James begins, “is not... the word for it. But it is you who fulfills me at this present time. And you...” he sighs as though delivering grave news. “You bring me great pleasure.” 

“And if any other were here—the handsomest lad—“ Francis is fully hard again, fattened on the words of praise he wrings from James, and returns his attention to James’ body, still agonizingly gentle. “—Would you—“ he spills out some oil into his palm and teases at James’ opening with his thick finger. “—If he stood before us, would you still prefer me?” 

“Yes,” James says, gasping as Francis’ forefinger breaches him. “Yes.”

Francis gives a pleased huff as he coaxes a gleaming, milky bead from his cockhead with his thumb. It’s a lovely thing, Francis’ prick—a plump, ruddy thing with a soft bend, it reminds James of the maxim of pets resembling their owners. “But then again,” Francis says, his tone shifting to the soft, stern one James loves, his brogue plain, “I’d wager a wanton lass like yourself would say anything to get a cock up ye, mm?” 

“Yours,” James says, angry with himself for the truth of it. “It’s yours I want.”

“Aye, I don’t know—a greedy cunt like yours. Dance with anyone who asked, you would.”

“I’d best like to _dance_ with you, Francis. You. Please.”

“D’ye swear on it?”

“Yes,” James nods, desperate as Francis’ fingertip hits home and strokes relentlessly. “Only you, Francis, please.” He wills his gaze to be limpid, pleading; he holds his lips softly parted. 

“Christ, girly, you’re a sight. A comely lass like yourself begging for cock—almost enough to make me spend on that pretty face. How’d you like that? Whitewash you, I would. And you’d thank me for it, mm?”

“I would,” James mutters savagely.

“I’d rather that glorious cunny, I think.” 

“Yes,” James says, “that. Please.” He arches his back and spreads his knees and watches hungrily as Francis laves himself with oil. 

He grabs hold of James’ hip with one hand and with the other teasingly drags his slickened head over James’ hole, which, loosened by Francis’ fingers, mouths hungrily at it. “Yes what, James?” Francis rasps softly.

James hesitates, panting. “I want your cock in my cunny,” he says crisply, each consonant cut glass. _Cunny_ he endows with an especial chill, finding it repugnant on his tongue.

Francis gives James one last lazy, vaguely triumphant leer—James feels flayed by it—and steadies James by his hip before sheathing himself completely with one snap of his hips. Draws back out, then pistons back in hard and swift. Francis has a singular gift for fucking—there’s no other word for what he does, that brutal monosyllable bitten off at the gate of the throat and implying itself exactly. Onomatopoeia. James had not often been fucked before. But not only is Francis physically rough with James, scratching and biting and rousting him about, but he’s also got a filthy tongue and a knack for finding novel ways of defiling a body other lovers had treated as a temple. And James had been disturbed to discover how much he had, without realizing it, craved exactly this.

Now Francis slows and grabs a fistful of James’ hair. 

“What do you fancy they’d say, virtuous _maid_ that you are, if I marked you all up?” He knuckles down onto his elbow and sinks his teeth into the pale plane above his nipple.

“Please, you mustn’t—in all seriousness—“

“What would all your high-born virtue be worth then?” With callused thumb and forefinger he twists James nipple hard and James gasps. “Once you’ve let _my_ likes at you, anyone could thereafter do as he pleased, yes? Perhaps we’d rouge you up like a true lady, that...” he pauses, sneers, “...that pretty face’d be woman enough for the ship’s boys.”

“Please, sir,” James gasps, the honorific slipping out unbidden. What he means is, _please stop_. Or _please, go on._ He feels, in the floor of his belly, the banked heat widening into flame. Desperately he reaches for his own prick and Francis does not stop him.

“That’s right,” he snarls, “show me—how I make you feel—“

“I want you to fill me,” James says, and it’s true. He thinks of after, the creeping, warm seep of Francis from inside of him, and spends. A slow unwinding: he is briefly, beautifully rooted to him. Then Francis drops his head all heavy and matted with sweat and lays loose kisses all down wherever on James he can reach. Sometimes it is like this: like he forgets they do not love each other. Then his hips stutter, halt, and he spills with a grunt. He lowers his head, ear to James’ breast, and stays til, softened completely, he slips out.

“Do get up,” James says after some time.

Neither of them speak as Francis dresses and James cleans himself, though James can no longer tell if their silences are strained or comfortable ones. But there is a small, far light in his breast; a rooting in this quiet to his old and other self, he for whom the sun each morning still rose like clockwork.


End file.
